July 07, 2006

Ever stopped to think how much fuel delivery trucks - on the road all day, just about every day, in stop and go city traffic - use? Obviously it's been on UPS' mind. Its ubiquitous brown trucks are going green...

The US EPA and United Parcel Service (UPS) have partnered to develop the world's most fuel-efficient, cost-effective delivery vehicle. The first of its kind UPS truck uses EPA-patented hydraulic hybrid technology that increases fuel efficiency by 60-70% in urban driving while lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 40%.

April 04, 2005

It is the ship of the future - powered by the sun, wind and waves. The futuristic vessel has no conventional engines, uses no fossil fuels and releases no harmful emissions into the atmosphere or pollution into the sea.

The first ship to use the technology will be a cargo vessel that will transport up to 10,000 cars from Britain to Australia, New Zealand and other countries. If successful, it will be used on passenger ferries and cruise ships.

The wave energy is harnessed by 12 dolphin-like fins on the ship's hull, while sun and wind energy is collected by three giant, rigid, fin-like sails covered in solar panels.

The sails and fins will also help the ship to cruise at a speed of 15 knots and stability will be provided by the pentamaran hull - a slim monohull that will have two smaller support hulls, known as sponsons, on each side.

Once harnessed the sun, wind and wave energy will be combined with hydrogen and stored in fuel cells.

The ship's launch isn't exactly just around the corner, and it is anticipated to initially be more costly than traditional options, but the company is convinced it is the wave of the future (no pun intended).

Nils Dyvik, the company's chief executive, said that a
ship with some of the Orcelle's "environmentally friendly
characteristics" could be launched within five years, but said that the
"complete version" might not be crossing the oceans until 2025.

The
cost of the futuristic vessel is not known, but Mr Dyvik said that he
expected that it would be more expensive than a conventional cargo
ship, which costs up to £46 million. "The cost is likely to come down,
however, as the technology gets cheaper," he added.

Mr
Dyvik said that the E/S Orcelle was the future of ocean transport. "It
represents the achievable goal of building a zero-emission cargo ship,"
he said.

Too much of our fuel is wasted, and lost as heat. From this observation is derived the following principle: "The more spectacular a technology, the cruder it probably is. A truly mature technology will be as exciting as watching the grass grow." Thus, any technology that flames or spews smoke or shoots sparks or makes a lot of light is inefficient.

According to the abstract, applications of nanotechnology in the energy arena include:

Greatly increased energy efficiency:

- Non-thermal energy use. Burning a fuel wastes most of its energy. However, utilizing chemical energy without thermalizing it, as in fuel cells, requires molecular structuring.

- Distributed fabrication. Supplanting the massive importation of raw materials into conventional factories, and their re-export as finished products, by nanoscale fabrication from local materials will make the enormous present transportation infrastructure obsolete,.

- As materials having strengths approaching the limits set by chemical bonds become available, they will make transportation considerably more efficient through savings in vehicle mass.

The abstract also states that nanotechnology will have an application for molecular separation.

Element separation, whether for pollution control or resource extraction, is not intrinsically energy-intensive. The enormous energy costs of present-day pyrometallurgy largely result from the application of heat to force phase changes. Biosystems achieve their efficiencies by using direct molecular separation via specialized molecular machinery

Given the fact that one of the big obstacles standing in the way of hydrogen is creating the hydrogen fuel in the first place - i.e., separating it from oxygen in water - I wonder if nanotechnology might be part of where the answer lies for making it a mainstream and economically feasible possibility.

June 15, 2004

I just ran across the site of an interesting organization called Pure Energy Systems. In their own words:

Pure Energy Systems (PES), a non-profit organization, was created with the primary objective of open sourcing alternative energy technologies, especially the ‘free energy’ variety that taps into inexhaustible energy reservoirs. PES will also address other closely related fields such as waste remediation, recycling, water purification and derivation, and making available suppressed technologies in more conventional arenas. PES is already in touch with several working technologies that are preparing to plug into this open sourcing model, including two different motor designs, as well as several super-efficient carburetor designs.

The open sourcing will foster a productive public exchange among inventors, theoreticians, engineers, scientists, and businessmen; providing a repository of the best thinking on a given technology, accelerating the technology’s development, and catalyzing its arrival in the marketplace as well as its continued improvement.

Here's how they define open sourcing:

To publicly publish a technology that has reached at least proof of concept stage; openly and freely providing a complete set of instructions of how to reproduce the technology; giving a list of locations where people can go to view a unit in operation; sponsoring a worldwide dialogue on how to improve the technology; actively reporting the improvements as they are discovered; providing kits for reproduction; and fostering development of the technology toward readiness for mass production.

We welcome any development team to take what we have openly published and prepare it for market.

January 02, 2004

The PowerFrontiers blog points to an article about a new Dutch invention - an electric engine contained within the wheels of the vehicle - that can boost fuel efficiency by 60%. It is currently being tested for six months on a bus in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn.

PowerFrontiers summarizes:

The invention can be (very roughly) explained by having one imagine holding the axle of an electric motor steady and letting the motor spin instead. Since the motor doubles as the wheel and the axles do not spin, many moving parts are eliminated and the power that would have been lost to friction of those parts is regained. The use of this wheel could help solve some of the problems facing hydrogen fuel cell car designers since such a dramatic boost in efficiency would result in smaller fuel tanks or longer durations between refueling stops.